The impact of environmental costs on achieving sustainable competitive advantage An applied study in Kufa cement factory

Abstract

In recent decades, companies have integrated environmental concerns into their strategic and operational activities. Despite previous literature, the debate about the competitive benefits of environmental practices remains open. The research seeks to delve into environmental costs and sustainable competitive advantage, as companies have increased interest in sustainable competitive advantage by preserving the environment from environmental pollution to improve production quality at low cost and without wasting time to raise environmental performance, which contributes to achieving sustainable competitive advantage and in order to achieve this goal Al-Kufa /Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf cement factory was selected as a sample for the research.

The researchereached several conclusions, the most important of which is that environmental costs have a positive role in achieving sustainable competitive advantage by reducing the used resources as well as treating environmental pollution from its effects to a minimum to reduce the generation of environmental waste and gas emissions and thus achieving sustainable competitive advantage. The researcher recommends providing skills and experiences by following environmental cost accounting to identify, measure, reduce and separate environmental costs from other costs of the plant to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.